Asked about the recent wave of Palestinian terrorism, US Secretary of State John Kerry declared at Harvard University on October 13 that “you have this violence because there’s a frustration” and that “there’s been a massive increase in settlements over the course of the last years.” In other words, Arabs stab Jews out of frustration caused by the building of settlements by Israel. Kerry is flat wrong on both accounts: the current wave of violence was not caused by Israeli settlements, and there has been no massive increase in settlements over the past years.

That settlements are the cause of terrorism must have been news to Muhanad Alkobi, the Israeli Bedouin who murdered an Israeli soldier on October 18 in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba. Alkobi was himself the resident of an illegal Bedouin settlement in the Negev Desert. According to his friends’ testimonies he had become a devout Muslim and an admirer of the Islamic State, which recently expressed support for the murder of Jews by “the Mujahedin of the Al-Aqsa [Mosque]”. In one of its recently uploaded videos (accompanied by the hashtag #BeheadtheJews), the Islamic State encourages the “Mujahedin of Jerusalem” to “take the path of jihad against the Jews. Strike fear in their hearts, they are the enemies of Allah.”

The Islamic State calls for jihad against the Jews, not against settlements. So do Palestinian preachers and leaders. On October 16, Palestinian preacher Sheikh Khaled Al-Mughrabi declared: “The Children of Israel will be forced to change their plans to build the Temple inside the structure of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and will have to build it outside the Al-Aqsa Mosque… A Temple of heresy to worship the Devil … [At the End of Days] we will follow the Jews everywhere. They will not escape us … The Children of Israel will all be exterminated, the Anti-Christ will be killed and the Muslims will live in comfort for a long time.”

On October 10, Fatah (the party of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas) praised Is’haq Mresh, the 16 year-old Palestinian who stabbed two Israelis in the Old City of Jerusalem, calling him a “martyr hero” who died for the Al-Aqsa mosque. On October 12, Fatah tweeted a map of all of “Palestine” (not of the West Bank and Gaza) with the words: “My land, to you my love and my heart.” On October 13, Fatah tweeted a picture of four of the Palestinian terrorists who recently killed Israelis with the following praise: “O Martyrs, come in droves!” On October 14, Fatah posted on its Facebook account a doctored picture showing a corpse with a smiling face and the words: “We are a nation of martyrs that die with a smile on their face.” On October 18, Fatah’s Facebook page featured the cartoon of a Palestinian child kicking out a long-nosed and terrified Jew from the Temple Mount with the words: “Leave our country, our land, our sea.”

In all these statements, the murder of Jews is encouraged and death is glorified for the sake of Al-Aqsa and of “Palestine” (not only the West Bank). Settlements are nowhere mentioned.

John Kerry is not only wrong about the underlying cause of Palestinian terrorism, but also about the myth of “massive settlement expansion”.

Ahead of Israel’s 2015 elections, theJerusalem Post published (on March 11, 2015) the actual figures of settlement construction based on data provided by Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics. Here are the facts. Settlement constructions dropped by 52% in 2014 compared to the previous year; 9,216 Jewish homes were built in the West Bank between 2009 and 2014 (an average of 1,536 a year), as opposed to 11,366 between 2003 and 2008 (an average of 1,894 a year), meaning that there has been a 19% decrease in settlement construction under Netanyahu (since 2009). So Netanyahu was correct when he declared at the World Zionist Congress in Jerusalem on October 20 that that there has been less settlement building under his premiership than under that of his predecessors. Indeed, it is no coincidence he has been criticized by settlement mayors for building less than his predecessors.

As the Secretary of State of the United States, John Kerry has responsibilities and duties that include thinking before talking and checking facts. Kerry does neither.

Foreign attitudes to civil wars provide a useful way of understanding international relations. The Syrian civil war is no exception, though what it reveals about the current state of world politics is exceptionally dire.

During the American Civil War (1861-1865), Britain and France were first tempted to side with the Confederates but were deterred by Russia. The Russian-British rivalry of post-Napoleonic Europe, and US animosity toward the former colonial power and enemy, produced a de-facto entente between America and Russia (a collusion predicted by Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America). Had it not been for the risk of finding themselves at war with Russia, Britain and France would likely have fought with the Confederates. In 1861, when the American Civil War erupted, Russian Czar Alexander II emancipated the 23 million serfs of the Russian Empire. The war was about emancipation versus colonial rule. Britain and France were eager to prevent the emergence of a world order likely to undermine their power.

During the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), the French and British democracies sided (platonically) with the Spanish republicans, while the German and Italian dictatorships actively supported the Spanish nationalists. European powers took sides along ideological lines. During the Yugoslavian Civil War (1991-2001), countries took sides along ethnic and religious lines: Muslim countries sided with the Muslim Bosnians; Russia supported its Slavic and Orthodox Serbian brethren; the Vatican (soon followed by European countries) recognized the Catholic republics of Slovenia and Croatia. In light of the contrast between the motivations of foreign attitudes to the Spanish and Yugoslavian civil wars, American political scientist Samuel Huntington claimed in 1993 that ideological conflicts were about to be replaced by “clashes of civilizations.”

In the case of the Syrian civil war (which started in 2011), we are witnessing a “clash of Islamizations,” with the Sunni Islamic State (and other rebel groups) fighting the Shia Alawite regime of Bashir Assad. Unsurprisingly, Muslim countries are taking sides along the Sunni/Shia divide, with Iran supporting Assad and with Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar demanding his departure.

Not only does the Syrian war reveal a “clash of civilizations” within the Muslim world, but also the collapse of the “new world order” that was supposed to have emerged from the end of the Cold War. The fact that NATO bombed Serbia in 1999 without a Security Council resolution was telling about the balance of powers between Russia and the West: the former was helpless and the latter was unstoppable. Today, the situation is almost reverse. Russia’s military intervention is actually helping Assad, while US airstrikes have been unable (for a year) to repel the Islamic State. As for international law, foreign powers don’t even pretend to care about it: neither the United States not Russia bothered to secure a Security Council resolution before using military force in Syria.

Foreign attitudes to the Syrian civil war, in other words, reveal a new global disorder in which the Middle East is the world’s most dysfunctional, explosive, and violent region. Yet even in the chaotic Middle East, people have learned whom not to trust and whom not to fear: the United States of America. President Obama dropped his Egyptian ally Hosni Mubarak after the latter shot demonstrators, but when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did just that Obama said it was none of America’s business. The message? In the Middle East, the common practice of killing your subjects will only cost you your job if America is your ally. Vladimir Putin, by contrast, is far less picky. As Assad can testify, making 200,000 victims, millions of refugees, and gazing your own people will not cost you the support of Russia. It is fair to assume that our region’s autocrats took notice.

As Noah Rothman recently wrote in Commentary Magazine: “This is not the Cold War, It’s Worse.” During the Cold War, American and Russian fighters would not have bombed different targets in a same country, and Russian planes would not have violated the airspace of a NATO member (as just happened in Turkey).

If foreign attitudes to civil wars provide a useful way of understanding international relations, then the grim conclusion from the Syrian inferno is that the loss of American leadership in the Middle East is unprecedented and might be irreparable.

Last week, Eitam Henkin and his wife Naama were murdered in front of their four children on their way home. I had the privilege of meeting Eitam, as he attended a class I taught on Alexis de Tocqueville at the Kohelet Policy Forum. Eitam was a learned scholar, a gentle soul, and a righteous man. He had authored two books and dozens of articles on Jewish law, and was completing a doctorate in history at Tel-Aviv University. Eitam and his wife were murdered right before the Shabbat when the Book of Ecclesiastes (“Kohelet”) is read in synagogues. Kohelet states that “there is a just man who perishes in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man who prolongs his like in his wickedness” (Eccl. 7, 15), but does not claim to have an explanation.

The question of why Eitam and Naama were murdered is not only philosophical but also political. For the Palestinians and their many apologists in the West, the Henkins brought this tragedy upon themselves by being the willing agents of “the occupation.” The Palestinian Authority (PA) did not condemn the crime, because it considers it “a legitimate act of resistance.” When, two days after the murder of the Henkins, Nehemia Lavi and Aharon Banito were stabbed to death in the Old City of Jerusalem, the Palestinian Authority only deplored the shooting of their assailant. PA spokesman Ihab Bseiso added that “The only solution is the end of the Israeli occupation of our occupied Palestinian land and the establishment of our independent state on the 1967 borders with Jerusalem as its capital.” In other words, terrorism will end when Israel relinquishes every inch of land in conquered during the Six Day War.

This is a lie.

Eighty-six years ago, in August 1929, 133 Jews were murdered by Arabs in Jerusalem, in Hebron, and in Safed. There was no “Israeli occupation” at the time. The reason why Jews were murdered in the Old City of Jerusalem in August 1929 and in October 2015 is, in fact, identical: Palestinian leaders ignited the violence by falsely accusing the Jews of “defiling” the Al-Aqsa mosque.

In 1929, Haj Amin al Husseini (the Mufti of Jerusalem and Nazi collaborator praised as a “hero” by PLO chief Yasser Arafat) distributed leaflets with doctored photographs accusing the Jews of planning to take over the Al-Aqsa mosque. On 16 September 2015, PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas declared the following: “We bless every drop of blood that has been spilled for Jerusalem, which is clean and pure blood, blood spilled for Allah, Allah willing. Every Martyr (Shahid) will reach Paradise, and everyone wounded will be rewarded by Allah. The Al-Aqsa Mosque is ours, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is ours, and they [the Jews] have no right to defile them with their filthy feet. We will not allow them to, and we will do everything in our power to protect Jerusalem.”

It should therefore come as no surprise that Muhannad Halabi, the 19 year-old Arab murderer who stabbed two Jews to death in Jerusalem’s Old City this past Saturday night, wrote the following on his Facebook page before committing his crime: “What is happening to the Al-Aqsa Mosque is what is happening to our holy places and the way of our Prophet.” Halabi was incited, and he acted accordingly. He did not write that what had motivated him was the establishment of an independent Arab state within the armistice lines that used to separate Israel from Jordan. His targeted victims were not military but civilian. His motivation was not political but religious.

The same applies to the murderers of Eitam and Naama Henkin. As members of Hamas, they do not strive for the establishment of an additional Arab state alongside Israel, but for an Islamic state “over every inch of Palestine” (Article 6 of the Hamas charter) where no Jew (and no Christian) will be allowed. Hamas’ Charter quotes the famous Al-Bukhari “hadith” (a statement not included in the Coran but attributed to Mohamed): “The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems kill the Jews, when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.” According to a poll conducted by Stanley Greenberg in July 2011, 73% of Palestinians agree with this hadith (as reported by The Jerusalem Post on 15 July 2011). It is no coincidence if the targets of Palestinian terrorism are civilian.

As in 1929, the murder of Jews today is motivated by libelous incitement and by religious belief –both of which existed before the establishment of the State of Israel, and both of which would still exist even if Israel were to withdraw from every inch of land it conquered in June 1967.

Russia’s recent buildup in Syria includes battle tanks, military advisers, security guards and portable housing units for the building of a military base in the coastal town of Latakia (a stronghold of Bashar Assad). White House spokesman Josh Earnest claims that the motivation driving Vladimir Putin’s renewed support of Assad “are rather hard to discern.” But are they?

After the conclusion of the nuclear deal between world powers and Iran, President Barack Obama declared that he had been pleasantly surprised by Moscow’s constructive role in amending Iran’s positions. As I explained in a previous column, Russia has an economic interest in ending Iran’s international isolation in order to build up a natural gas cartel. To guarantee Tehran’s cooperation on future coordinated gas exports, Russia must maintain Iranian interests in Syria – and that means preserving Assad’s partial control of what is left of Syria.

Putin’s decision also seems to have been influenced by the inconclusive results of US-led airstrikes against the Islamic State (IS). In September 2014, Obama announced the launching of airstrikes against IS to “degrade, and ultimately destroy” it. One year later exactly, this objective is far from being achieved. The Islamic State is holding its ground and has even expanded in the past few months. Putin seems to be calculating that, if the US is not able to degrade (let alone destroy) IS after one year of military action, then Russia must take care of its own interests in Syria by preserving what is left of Assad’s strongholds. True, Britain, France and Australia have joined, or are about to join, the US airstrikes against IS, but Putin has good reasons to doubt that this will constitute a game-changer.

Assad’s recent setbacks (which include the loss of an important airbase south of Aleppo on September 9) are a source of concern both for Putin and Obama, though for different reasons. For Putin, those setbacks are a clear indication that Assad could now be gone at any time. For Obama, it reveals the inefficiency of his military strategy, since the airbase south of Aleppo was captured by Jabhat al-Nusra, which is the target of American airstrikes.

Putin obviously realizes that no amount of Russian weaponry will enable Assad to reconquer all of Syria. Even if such an option existed, doing so would dangerously escalate tensions with the West. Like his predecessors, Putin knows his limits. But he also knows that a de facto partition of Syria is likely to have one thing in common with the de facto partition of the Ukraine: the West will oppose it in words and even in deeds (with economic sanctions), but acquiesce to it for lack of better options. In Syria, such de facto partition will be along the lines of an Alawi-dominated coastal strip that will hook up with a Hezbollah-controlled southern Lebanon.

Putin also understands that the West has cornered itself into a Catch 22 situation with Iran. If the Obama Administration doesn’t want to derail the nuclear deal from the onset, it cannot openly challenge Iran’s fundamental interests. In the Middle East, those interests include the partial maintenance of Assad. On September 7, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif dissipated doubts about Iran’s endgame in Syria by declaring that “those who set conditions about the Syrian president should be blamed for the continued war.” As for European leaders, they claim to want Assad’s departure for the benefit of “democratic forces,” but they will be the first to acquiesce to Assad’s maintenance if doing so proves to be the only way to end the flow of Syrian refugees. If Assad loses Aleppo, more Syrian refugees will flee for Europe.

Putin’s motivations are thus not “hard to discern” at all. At this point, he has every reason to believe that the West will not defeat IS but that IS might soon defeat Assad. Putin, moreover, understands that the Obama Administration is so determined to implement the nuclear deal with Iran that it will be tolerant of Iran’s support for Assad. As for Europe, Putin knows that it will agree to Assad’s continued rule if he proves able and willing to end the flood of Syrian refugees. Putin is a shrewd tactician who has become an expert in playing Western fears, inconsistencies and duplicity to his advantage.

As a Jew, I have a hard time with the idea that boarding an overcrowded train to Germany has come to symbolize hope for survivors. “I am happy that Germany has become a country that many people outside of Germany now associate with hope,” said German Chancellor Angela Merkel. What a historical twist. And what an understatement.

With hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees entering the Old Continent, and with many more likely to follow, European governments are trying to figure out how to provide food, shelter and legal status for the newcomers. Increasingly they are also trying to figure out how to stop the influx. For four years, Europe has looked the other way as the civil war in Syria killed an estimated 300,000 people and made four million refugees. Now that some of those refugees are entering Europe, the source of the problem can no longer be ignored. But how should it be addressed?

To their credit, European governments tried to stay out of the Syrian quagmire precisely because of its intractability. Winston Churchill said after the 1941 German invasion of Russia that “if Hitler invaded hell, I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.” Picking a lesser evil is a no-brainer, and a necessity, when you fight for your life. As long as European interests were not at stake, European governments could hardly be blamed for avoiding to take sides between Assad and IS. The flow of migrants, and the heartbreaking image of a toddler found dead on a beach, leave no room for dithering.

Hence the growing, yet still timid, calls from European leaders to go fight IS in Syria. French President François Hollande has announced that his country is considering airstrikes against the organization. Britain has conducted its first armed drone strike in Syria. French parliamentarian (and presidential hopeful) Bruno Le Maire is calling for a French-led ground military operation against IS. The influx of Syrian refugees is undoubtedly concentrating European minds. Yet even the most gung-ho Europeans have two problems: a. they are in denial about the fact that bombing IS means helping Assad; b. cuts in military spending have seriously affected Europe’s ability to fight and destroy the organization.

Hollande declared that France will both bombard IS and demand Assad’s departure. This is wishful thinking. According to recent media reports, Russia has recently increased its military support for Assad. Since the signature of the Vienna accord on Iran’s military program in July, there are also reports of increased cooperation between Moscow and Tehran to preserve what is left of Assad’s regime. If Western powers want Iran’s cooperation on the Vienna agreement, toppling Assad is simply off the table. And airstrikes against IS benefit Assad, whether those airstrikes are conducted by the United States, by Britain or by France.

Europe’s second problem is that it is barely meeting NATO’s target for military spending. In her memoirs “Downing Street Years”, Margaret Thatcher laments that Britain, having previously exaggerated its power, now exaggerates its impotence. This impotence, however, is hardly exaggerated: it is both real and self-inflicted. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, many Europeans adopted the “end of history” psyche, assuming they could safely turn into one big Switzerland and cut military spending. Two-and-a-half decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, however, Europe is facing an aggressive Russia and an Islamic threat with reduced military means.

Military spending is 3.5% of GDP in the US, 4.5% in Russia, 2.2 % both in France and Britain, and 1.2% in Germany. In 2014, Russia’s military spending increased by 8.3%, but France’s and Britain’s decreased. In December 2014, British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne announced that his country would not meet NATO’s target of dedicating 2% of GDP to military spending. The Economist reported in April 2015 that Britain might cut its military spending by 10% over the next five years. France is mired in economic stagnation. Germany is wealthy but aging and pacifist.

In 1939, President Franklin Roosevelt reportedly said about Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza, “He might be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.” What Roosevelt meant by this is that Somoza was indeed a ruthless dictator, but that he also happened to be anti-communist. If Europe wants to end the influx of Syrian refugees, it might have no other choice than to adopt the “our son of a bitch” policy vis-à-vis Assad.

The announcement earlier this week that Egypt has huge offshore natural gas resources is a game changer that will have repercussions for Israel’s foreign policy as well as Israeli politics. Israel is no longer the potentially dominant natural gas exporter of the eastern Mediterranean. One of the consequences of this new reality is that the natural gas deal promoted by Prime Minister Netanyahu is unlikely to be approved any time soon. This delay will, in turn, further deteriorate the tense relationship between Netanyahu and his coalition partner, Aryeh Deri.

As Israel’s economy minister, Deri holds the key to approval of an agreement laboriously reached between the Israeli government and the US-Israeli consortium that owns the Tamar and Leviathan gas fields. By law, he is authorized to overrule the antitrust regulator if he considers that doing so is vital to the national interest.

The outgoing antitrust regulator, Prof. David Gilo, had ruled before resigning a couple of months ago that the consortium operating the Tamar and Leviathan fields constitutes a monopoly. To Netanyahu’s surprise, and shock, Deri has refused to overrule Gilo’s opinion.

Last week, Deri announced that even if the Knesset were to back the gas deal approved by the government, he would still not overrule Gilo’s opinion and would wait to hear from the next antitrust regulator what he has to say. Netanyahu, who thought Deri would have obliged after the Knesset vote, is livid.

The discovery of Egypt’s natural gas has both strengthened and weakened Netanyahu’s case. On the one hand, Netanyahu can reasonably argue that Israel’s procrastination and cumbersome decision making have turned off investors who now have every reason to go for Egypt’s larger reserves and straightforward line of command. On the other hand, one major justification for overruling the previous antitrust regulator has collapsed like a soufflé. The Foreign Ministry’s director-general, Dore Gold, recently explained to the Israeli cabinet that the antitrust regulator must be overruled so as to pre-empt Iran’s sale of natural gas to Israel’s strategic neighbors.

According to the Foreign Ministry, Iran is about to fill the void left by Egypt’s supposedly dried-out gas resources, by doubling its gas production and by selling to Jordan and even to Egypt itself. Hence the urgency of approving the deal so as to sell Israeli gas to needy neighbors. Now that Egypt is expected to become a huge natural gas producer, this argument no longer makes sense. Shortly after the Israeli cabinet was told that Egypt had run out of gas, Italy’s energy company ENI announced the discovery of a huge natural gas field in Egypt’s territorial waters (known as the “Zohr” field). According to ENI, this gas field is the largest ever discovered in the Mediterranean: with an estimated 30 trillion cubic feet of gas, it is nearly twice larger than Israel’s Leviathan.

The gas deal recently approved by the Israeli government (yet still on hold as long as Deri refuses to overrule the antitrust regulator) also sets prices that do not reflect the increased supply (and competition) that the Zohr gas field is expected to bring about. Deri, in other words, now has a more than reasonable argument to defy the prime minister. It is in his political interest to do so.

Deri ran the 2015 elections on a left-wing economic platform, claiming to be the only party addressing the needs of the underprivileged. Netanyahu, having called a snap election to rid himself of his ambitious finance minister Yair Lapid, was so eager to bring the Orthodox parties (including Deri’s) into his coalition that he gave in to all their demands. Now he has to put up with their economic agenda. Deri has no reason to be flexible. He knows that Netanyahu doesn’t have a coalition without him, and he hasn’t forgotten Netanyahu’s support for Eli Yishai – Deri’s archenemy who took nearly four Knesset seats away from him in the 2015 elections, yet didn’t pass the electoral threshold (to Netanyahu’s chagrin). Deri’s Shas party partially owes its electoral strength to a demagogic socialist rhetoric, and there is no reason for Deri to backtrack on this.

For Netanyahu, approving the gas deal is crucial because his contested leadership is at stake and so is Israel’s international credibility. Yet the prospects are getting slimmer by the day. As Netanyahu’s frantic effort to convince 13 Senate Democrats to vote against their president is doomed to fail, the looming debacle over the gas deal couldn’t come at a worse time. A double humiliation on Iran’s nuclear program and on Israel’s natural gas is likely to be politically unsustainable.

The long-awaited approval of the natural gas deal by the Israeli government has the potential of turning Israel into a major energy exporter and therefore into a different kind of geopolitical player. This change is already being felt vis-à-vis a former regional ally-turned-challenger: Turkey.

In September 2014, the owners of the Leviathan gas field (Noble Energy and the Delek Group) signed an agreement with Jordan’s national electric company (NEPCO) for the export of 45 BCM (billion cubic meters) of natural gas over 15 years. In June 2015, Noble Energy and Delek signed a letter of intent with British Gas to provide 105 BCM of natural gas to the British Gas LNG (liquefied natural gas) plant in Idku, Egypt, for 15 years.

Turkey, too, is interested in Israel’s natural gas. The CEO of the Turkish energy company Turcas, Batu Aksoy, recently declared: “We can still create a win-win opportunity here. There are large quantities of gas there [in Israel], and they [the Israelis] want to supply gas to Egypt and Turkey.” Turcas added that “if they [the Israelis] supply Turkey with 8-10 BCM a year and sign a 20-year gas agreement, this will meet Turkey’s needs.” In other words, Israel can meet Turkey’s natural gas needs, and Turkey sounds interested in becoming a major customer.

Turkey depends on natural gas for the production of 50% of its electricity, and its natural gas consumption is expected to double over the next 20 years. Yet Turkey has no natural gas resources and depends on expensive suppliers such as Russia, Iran, and Azerbaijan. Turcas is said to be negotiating the purchase of 7 BCM of natural gas over the next 20 years from Israel’s Leviathan field. Turkey’s gas bill would be significantly reduced if the gas were delivered via a pipeline from Leviathan (buying LNG from Russia is far more expansive).

Yet under Recep Erdogan’s leadership, Turkey would find it hard to sign a multi-billion natural gas contract with Israel without delivering on its promise to ease the naval blockade of the Gaza Strip. Yasin Aktay, an adviser to Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, revealed recently that Turkey is discussing with the government of Greek Cyprus the establishment of a seaport that would deliver goods to the Gaza Strip under international supervision (possibly by NATO forces). Turkey is also said to be brokering a long-term ceasefire between Hamas and Israel.

If Turkey can claim the partial lifting of the Gaza blockade, it will be able to sign a natural gas agreement with Israel without being accused of ignoring the fate of the Palestinian enclave. For Israel, a partial lifting of the Gaza blockade under NATO supervision, together with a long-term ceasefire agreement with Hamas, might be worth it – depending, of course, on the terms of such an arrangement.

Turkey’s recent diplomatic efforts to obtain a partial lifting of the Gaza blockade must therefore be understood in the wider context of Israel’s emergence as a major natural gas exporter and of Turkey’s energy needs. Turkey needs Israel’s gas, but it also needs to save face vis-à-vis Hamas. Israel’s huge natural gas reserves constitute a new and unprecedented asset for Israel’s foreign policy. Relations between Israel and Turkey might never be fully mended, especially as long as Erdogan is in power, but the mutual interests created by Israel’s natural gas resources are likely to stabilize bilateral relations to the benefit of the two countries and of the region.

I started my week on Sunday morning with Facebook and Twitter alerts notifying me that controversial French journalist Charles Enderlin was on my case. After reading an interview I gave to Le Figaro, Enderlin accused me of “scandalous propaganda” for saying that “Israeli society, like every society, has extremists from both right and left.” According to Enderlin, extremists from the right must be singled out because only they commit murder (he listed as examples the stabbing at the Jerusalem gay pride parade, the criminal arson of the Dawabshe family’s home, the murder of Yitzhak Rabin, and the mass-killing of Muslim worshipers in Hebron by Baruch Goldstein).

While the list of victims of left-wing terrorism is long (think of Action Directe, Baader-Meinhof or the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine), it is true that political murders have not been committed by Jewish Israeli left-wing radicals. Many, however, have collaborated with terrorist organizations or foreign countries that target Jewish civilians. Among them are Udi Adiv, an Israeli communist who was convicted for handing military information to Syria; Tali Fahima, an Israeli convert to Islam who was jailed for collaborating with the chief of the Al-Aqsa’s Martyrs’ Brigades; and Azmi Bishara, a Marxist and former Member of Knesset who fled Israel after being accused of providing military information to Hezbollah during the 2006 Lebanon war.

But is it intellectually honest to categorize Baruch Goldstein, Yigal Amir (the murderer of Yitzhak Rabin) and Yishai Shlissel (who stabbed gay pride parade participants and killed one of them) as right-wingers? Shlissel, an ultra-orthodox Jew who declared in court that he does not recognize the state prosecuting him, is hardly a nationalist. As for Baruch Goldstein and Yigal Amir, their belief in the sanctity of the biblical land of Israel is what labels them “right-wing” in Israel’s political parlance. When I moved to Israel as a student, I was told that the right-left debate here revolves around territory. I couldn’t understand why, and still can’t.

The ideological divide between right and left in open societies started before Israel took over territories in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, and it is unrelated to Israel’s territorial stomachaches. This divide stems from two conflicting and mostly unprovable assumptions about human nature and about man’s ability to shape reality. The “state of nature” is heaven to Rousseau and hell to Hobbes because the former thinks that “man is born free and everywhere he is in chains” while the latter claims that man in by nature “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Rousseau believed not only in man’s inner goodness but also in his ability to subdue reality to his will. He was rebuked after the French Revolution by Edmund Burke, who claimed that no functioning social order could be designed from scratch.

The double controversy about human nature and about the malleability of reality is the source of conflicting policies in economics, in foreign policy, and in social issues. Kant’s “perpetual peace” relies on the goodness of man and on his ability to design a peaceful international order. Clausewitz’s aphorism that “war is the continuation of politics by other means,” by contrast, is the motto of political realism. Being a realist, or a right-winger, is therefore unrelated to the integrity of the biblical land of Israel. A realist would undoubtedly be skeptical about the intentions of Israel’s neighbors, but he would also assess Israel’s territorial policy based on interest – not ideology.

What Baruch Goldstein, Yigal Amir and Yishai Shlissel have in common is religious fundamentalism. While the fundamentalism of Shlissel denies the very legitimacy of the State of Israel, that of Goldstein and Amir makes this legitimacy conditional: the State of Israel is legitimate only as long as it faithfully behaves as the Messiah’s donkey (the aphorism used by Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak Kook, the first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of British Mandatory Palestine, in his attempt to reconcile Orthodox Judaism with Zionism). Yet, as Prof. Yeshayahu Leibowitz would point out in his conversations with Rabbi Kook, the “Messiah’s donkey” allegory inevitably turns secular nationalism into a divine design. Leibowitz, himself a Zionist and a strictly observant Jew, warned against such linkage and claimed that only by emptying Zionism of any religious meaning would the Jews be preserved from fundamentalist temptation.

Blaming conservative Israelis for the crimes of religious fundamentalists is manipulative and dishonest, but that is no excuse for religious Zionists not to face the fact that relating to the State of Israel as the Messiah’s donkey can have lethal consequences.

One of the reasons why sanctions against Iran will be lifted whether or not America pulls out of the nuclear deal is that the other signatories (Russia, China, and the EU) have an economic interest in lifting those sanctions. This economic interest includes natural gas.

On the face of it, there was no reason for Russia to let Iran re-renter the natural gas market. The two countries, after all, are competitors. Yet a closer look at the complicated geopolitics of energy makes sense of Russia’s endgame.

The EU imports about one third of its natural gas from Russia. This relative dependency limits the EU’s leverage over Russia and, therefore, Europe’s ability to rein in Vladimir Putin’s rampant annexation of eastern Ukraine. Since Iran has one of the world’s largest natural gas reserves, it could potentially help diversify Europe’s imports. Yet it might take a decade for Iran to turn into a major natural gas supplier (not least because Iran has a high domestic demand that is likely to increase). Putin, of course, understands that Iran might become a major competitor in this field, but he appears to assess that bringing back Iran into the natural gas market may help Russia create a cartel that will artificially inflate the price of natural gas. Doing so would serve Russia’s economic interests.

Russia, Iran and Qatar hold about 57% of the world’s natural gas reserves. They therefore constitute a de-facto oligopoly within the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF), an intergovernmental organization of 11 of the world’s leading natural gas producers (Algeria, Bolivia, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Iran, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Russia, Trinidad and Tobago, and Venezuela). GECF countries control not only 70% of the world’s natural gas reserves, but also 38% of the world’s pipeline trade. With the emergence of the United States as a major natural gas producer (thanks to fracking technology), and because of the US-Russia rivalry over pipeline routing in the Caspian Sea and the Caucasus, Russia wants to keep the upper hand in the natural gas market. Having Iran on board, in that regard, makes sense.

Russia is at odds not only with the US but also with the EU over natural gas pipelines. In order to reduce its dependency on Russian natural gas, the EU is planning the construction of the so-called Nabucco pipeline, which would connect it to Azerbaijan and Georgia via Turkey (thus bypassing Russia from the south). In December 2014, Putin announced his intention to build the so-called Turkish Stream pipeline, which would deliver natural gas directly from Russia to Turkey (via the Black Sea).

Since the establishment of GECF in 2001, there has been speculation that Russia and Iran intend to create a natural gas cartel similar to the OPEC oil cartel. In May 2006, Alexander Medvedev, the deputy chairman of Gazprom (Russia’s natural gas giant), warned that Russia might create “an alliance of gas suppliers that will be more influential than OPEC.” In February 2007, CNN reported that Russia and Iran were discussing the establishment of a natural gas cartel. So the reentry of Iran into the international natural gas market does serve Russia’s interests.

Then there are the economic interests of China, which is planning on building a natural gas pipeline from Iran to Pakistan. The US had previously threatened Pakistan with sanctions if it went ahead with this project. With the new nuclear deal with Iran, the US can no longer make such threats – whether or not it remains a party to the agreement or not.

Those who think that building a two-thirds majority in the US Congress would derail the deal with Iran are deluding themselves. Whether or not the US ends up being part of that deal, sanctions will be lifted by China, by Russia, and by the EU – all of which have a strong interest in letting Iran’s natural gas flow again.

Israeli reactions to the nuclear deal with Iran have been herd-like and along party lines. Now that the deal is a fait accompli (notwithstanding the slim possibility of gathering a two-third majority in the US Congress against it), energies would be more productively spent figuring out Israel’s strategy.

There was always something illogical about expecting the United States (let alone Russia and China) to conduct the negotiations with Iran based on Israel’s interests and concerns. In the real world, countries do not conduct their foreign policy to serve the interests of others (unless you believe in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion). Those who express outrage at the US for not fully endorsing Israel’s position match the naïveté with which they accuse President Barack Obama.

There is no known precedent of a country being barred from nuclear capability against its will. Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea achieved nuclear capability despite the opposition of the US. Saddam Hussein did not rebuild a nuclear plant after Israel’s military strike of 1981 because the war with Iran made it impossible for Iraq to afford a new plant, but Iraq might have restored its nuclear capability over time. In 1989, South Africa voluntarily dismantled its nuclear arsenal, but it was able to build that arsenal despite the opposition and pressures of the international community. Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi publicly announced in 2003 that he would end his nuclear program because he feared an American strike after the invasion of Iraq, but had it not been for this (likely unfounded) fear, Libya would have pursued its nuclear program.

Iran, by contrast, has no intention of abandoning its nuclear ambitions. As opposed to Iraq, which bought a turnkey nuclear plant from France, Iran is a highly sophisticated country with advanced nuclear expertise. Bombing Iran’s nuclear sites will not undo Iran’s knowledge. Had America walked away from the talks, the sanctions regime would likely have collapsed because of Russia and China. America was not alone in negotiating with Iran, and therefore the terms of the agreement also depended on the acquiescence of the Russians, the Chinese, and the Europeans. That America could have done better is possible. But to claim that America willingly forwent its leverage over Iran and its negotiating partners defies logic. More significantly, the deal does not take the military option off the table. On the contrary: a post-deal military strike would be more legitimate and more efficient.

It would be more legitimate because if Iran violates the deal America and Israel will have a stronger case (though a UN Security Council resolution is unlikely) to bomb Iran’s nuclear sites. It would be more efficient because the partial and flawed inspection regime will provide Western intelligence with additional and precious information about Iran’s nuclear program.

If Iran does honor the agreement (an unlikely scenario in light of the country’s past behavior), then America and Israel will have extra time to refine their military plans and preparedness. Once Iran becomes a threshold state, Israel will not be helpless thanks to its own (and undeclared) nuclear arsenal. Israel might have to reconsider its policy of nuclear ambiguity. Whether or not Israel revises this policy, it enjoys a strong deterrent vis-à-vis Iran –regardless of the armchair speculations about Iranian rationality or lack thereof.

The ad nauseam comparison to the 1938 Munich Accords is therefore inappropriate. Czechoslovakia was unable to defend itself, and France did not honor the written alliance it had with this country. French Premier Édouard Dalladier was not delusional and he knew that the agreement was a mistake, but he didn’t think France could fight Germany alone. In September 1938, moreover, France and Britain would have defeated Germany, and Hitler would have been overthrown (General Hans Oster and Captain Friedrich Wilhelm Heinz had plotted a coup against Hitler to avoid war). In 1938, military action against Germany would have toppled Hitler and put an end to German aggression. Today, military action against Iran would buy more time but it would not put an end to Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

As for Israel’s lobbying in Congress, it is a lose-lose strategy: if Israel manages to convince two-thirds of Congress to vote against the deal, the other Security Council members will go ahead with the lifting of sanctions anyways, but implementing the deal without America on board will be nearly impossible (not least because the West would lose its five-to-three majority in the joint commission set up by the agreement). Conversely, if Israel fails to build such a majority it will have achieved nothing and will be accused of political meddling.

From Machiavelli to Kissinger, philosophers and statesmen from the realist school share a deep skepticism (or pessimism) both about human nature and about man’s ability to shape reality. Israel’s decision-makers would be well-advised to internalize both sides of the realist coin.